Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell transplantation is used in the treatment of a wide variety of hematologic disorders, malignancies, and genetic diseases of the blood and blood forming cells. For example, hematopoietic progenitor cell transplantation is currently used to treat bone marrow destruction caused by irradiation and/or alkylating therapy in the treatment of cancer. Transplantation of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (e.g., short term progenitor cells) can be either “allogeneic” (cells are from another donor) or “autologous” (cells originate from the same individual). Hematopoietic progenitor cells useful for transplantation can be derived from bone marrow, peripheral blood, or umbilical cord blood.
Hematopoietic progenitor cells are responsible for hematopoietic recovery during the early post-transplant period. However, in some cases progenitor cell engraftment fails to occur due to e.g., micro-environmental defects as part of the underlying disease (e.g., aplastic anemia), stromal cell damage caused by chemoradiotherapy and development of graft-versus-host disease. In addition, while hematopoietic progenitor cells derived from cord blood may be preferred due to the low incidence of graft versus host disease, cord blood transplantations also have a slow rate of progenitor cell engraftment and hematopoietic recovery.
Thus, there is a need for the development of methods that improve engraftment of hematopoietic progenitor cells.